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Madness bubbled in a conical flask. The brew was attached to a rubber tube which ran across the table, connecting it to apparatus in an iron frame. Glass twisted downwards, circling unevenly, and in its gut dripped a thick red liquid. The bottom of the spiral joined to a metal box, the other side of which was a closed valve, and another tube stretched over the one table and down to another. Up again, it clung to a drip—an opaque bag stained orange and brown.
In a dingy room just outside the slums at Blackwater, an alchemist made his laboratory. Caged beneath his apparatus was a trio of flea-bitten alley cats, and to their right another cage—its iron door left ajar. Further right was a doorway, rotten with damp, beyond which was the alchemist in a long grey coat.
Tinkering at his equipment—bottles, pipes, and pouches of dark liquid—he shuffled anxiously. He reached up and adjusted a valve, then put both hands into the tub in front of him.
"Yes!" He encouraged. "Yes that's it."
In the tub was a toad as large as a cat. Though its skin was wet like a frog's, its form was uneven. It twitched in two inches of brown water. While the alchemist encouraged the animal, its eyes were glazed and its body limp. He held fast the needle connected to rubber tubes—a needle stuck in the animal's neck.
The toad kicked, and the alchemist pushed to hold it down.
"Yes!" He cried. "Yes!"
The toad began to wriggle all fours, struggling to escape the alchemist. Foaming at the mouth, it convulsed and lost control of its body once again.
"No!"
The toad's back bled beneath the skin, and elsewhere cancerous bumps rose and broke open like moles unearthing in a marsh.
"No!" He cried again.
The animal's eyes gained new vibrancy—a lilac glare—and it regained its movement with eerie disregard for the alchemist. It hopped, heavy but sure, away from the alchemist and out of the tub. It made it to the doorway while the alchemist only watched—and then it died.
The alchemist took his hair in his hands, and cursed the world.
